XLSExport: A CLR procedure to export proc results to Excel
A CLR procedure utilizing the NPOI library to export the results of a passed stored procedure to an Excel spreadsheet.
Harnessing PowerShell's String Comparison and List-Filtering Features
When you are first learning PowerShell, it often seems to be an 'Alice through the looking-glass' world. Just the simple process of comparing and selecting strings can seem strangely obtuse. Michael turns the looking-glass into wonderland with his wall-chart of the PowerShell string-comparison operators and syntax
SSRS 2008 R2 KPIs with bullet graphs
Key Performance Indicators are typically displayed in a scorecard with stop light indicators, which are either red, amber or green light icons. The limitation for these kind of indicators is that you can see the actual and target values in two different fields as well as see the status of the KPI in red, amber or green color. If the user wants to figure out the thresholds associated with the KPI, these values are generally not visible. Further, representing the threshold values in the scorecard itself defeats the purpose of the scorecard. The scorecard should display the KPI's status in the most summarized form and use a minimal amount of space on the dashboard. In this tip we would look at how to address this issue.
Excel in the Clouds
Today Steve Jones talks about a new use for cloud computing with Excel to analyze large sets of data.
SQL Peer-to-Peer Dynamic Structured Data Processing Collaboration
Unstructured and XML semi-structured data is now used more than structured data. But fixed structured data still keeps businesses running day in and day out, which requires consistent predictable highly principled processing for correct results. For this reason, it would be very useful to have a general purpose SQL peer-to-peer collaboration capability that can utilize highly principled hierarchical data processing and its flexible and advanced structured processing to support dynamically structured data and its dynamic structured processing. This flexible dynamic structured processing can change the structure of the data as necessary for the required processing while preserving the relational and hierarchical data principles. This processing will perform freely across remote unrelated peer locations anytime and transparently process unpredictable and unknown structured data and data type changes automatically for immediate processing using automatic metadata maintenance.
Archiving
It seems that archival isn't on the mind of most designers when they first build a database, which is OK, but DBAs ought to be building skills to implement this if the data size grows large.
Patch Week
This week Steve Jones notes there were quite a few patches from Microsoft for a variety of products. No SQL Server specific security patches, but that doesn't mean that DBAs shouldn't be patching systems.
Slowly changing dimensions using T-SQL MERGE
Of all the technical solutions to the problem of slowly changing dimensions, the T-SQL MERGE statement is one of the most elegant.
Blogs
Flyway Tips: AI Generating Migration Script Names
By Steve Jones
AI is a big deal in 2026, and at Redgate, we’re experimenting with how...
The Book of Redgate: Get the right stuff done
By Steve Jones
Another of our values: The facing page has this quote: “We admire people who...
Runing tSQLt Tests with Claude
By Ed Elliott
Running tSQLt unit tests is great from Visual Studio but my development workflow...
Forums
No Defaults Passwords Ever
Comments posted to this topic are about the item No Defaults Passwords Ever
Introduction of OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY = ON
Hi, We have low latency high volume system. I have a table having 3...
The Long Name
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Long Name
Question of the Day
The Long Name
I run this code to create a table:
When I check the length, I get these results:
A table name is limited to 128 characters. How does this work?